Italy, The "poor Art" Japan "mono" Is A Comparative Study

The two artistic schools "Arte Povera" and "Mono-ha" emerged in the 1960s have been selected to be studied and compared for this paper, however, the former evolved from the West, whilst the latter from the East. The reason for conducting research as such is that they were among the most important schools of the 1960s, during which modern art was experiencing a period of transcendence, and that they reacted to the then political movement and cultural trends of the whole society. Thus, the research and analysis might be meaningful and significant for people to further interpret and understand the family tree of art movements worldwide.This paper intends to explore various causes of artistic concepts embedded in "Arte Povera" and "Mono-ha" by using Marxism as a methodology, and through comparison to indicate the distinctiveness of the concepts and the root causes of their evolution, that is, the relationship between the cultural characteristics of postmodernism and the late capitalist society in the 1960s. Postmodernism was characterised as of against culture, literature, art and aesthetics. In that period of history, radical artistic concepts and materialism have made visual arts into a dilemma, led it into a meaningless definition, denying expressions as functional, denying uniqueness and truth. Visual arts finally went along a way of being deteriorated.The central task to conduct the research is to demonstrate and interpret-the roles both "Arte Povera" and "Mono-ha" schools have played in the 20th-century art movements, and their relationships with their society, politics, economy, culture, religion and the American art. On the basis of the historical records and archives available, a comparison between one and the other is conducted for further discussions, only through which the identity and distinctiveness in aesthetics could be scientifically and comprehensively made clearer.The meaning of comparing the two is to define their identity and distinctiveness between the Eastern and Western art of the same period in history, to discover the relationship between an artist's concept and societal-politics, economy and cultural context. Both of the two in aesthetics also reflects on different cultural characteristics in a diversity of traditions and social conditions.Both "Arte Povera" and "Mono-ha" schools cover a wider range of areas in expression including the ready-made concept out of Dadaism and Pop Art, in the meanwhile, they engaged in the meaninglessness against Dadaism, that is, a search for the meaning of essence out of the infinity of concepts; and for their consumerism against Pop Art. In fact, bom schools showcase some elements in common such as using collage as a form and appropriation as expression; however, their typical works are of no commercial characteristics. Both schools have deepened and extended the underlying meaning of art in concept and space. Their forms of expression range from architecture, film, photography, design, fashion, drama and others.Italy where "Arte Povera" evolved and Japan where "Mono-ha" did were all fascist countries in history, and were all defeated during the 2nd World War. After the war, both governments received a great support from the U. S. government. With their rapid development of economy in the 1950s and the 1960s, a self-awareness of their national identity became increasing stronger. Their identity focused on an expectation to survive the impact of the American culture.Therefore, I have referred to Marxist dialectical materialism in my process to conduct research and analysis on the origin of their evolution in aesthetics. An emphasis is made in appraisal of its creativeness in their aesthetical concept, whilst in criticism of the popularity re the concepts they have brought about. This will not only signify a significant implication in terms of analysising the developments and trends of contemporary art concepts, but will also be helpful to understand and take advantage of contemporary Chinese artists' "creative" values, gains and losses. This is just what...